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I tried to get some of those in the past but was never successful.
In the 90s a store owner in Germany went to Kenya for collecting fish and corals. He caught on pair like these, but they were not in the shipment when it arrived. They likely didn't survive the holding period at the exporter.

I tried to get some of those in the past but was never successful.
In the 90s a store owner in Germany went to Kenya for collecting fish and corals. He caught on pair like these, but they were not in the shipment when it arrived. They likely didn't survive the holding period at the exporter.

Why do you ask?

One of my favorite fish. I am looking for someone who knows how to keep them. I have seen them often in PNG and batangas Phillipines.

I think they need fairly large tanks. And to my knowledge they hardly ever get imported.

If you ever manage to get some share pictures here.

Feeder shrimp should be good to train them on frozen. It worked well for the Aulostomus chinensis I had in the mid 90s.

Just don't use coarse coral gravel in a tank with such fish that may fit into their mouth, only very fine sand or pieces way too big to suck up. My Aulostomus sucked pieces up when they must have been going after pods or food leftovers on the ground. They couldn't get them out on their own and suffocated before I came home to help them. When the first of them died this way I thought it was just a freak accident, but a few weeks later the second died the same way. It is a typical issue with these kind of fish.

Some of this has been covered but I thought I'd share what I know and clear up some misconceptions. It's not illegal to keep weedy seadragons and you don't need special permits to own them. The weedies that have been available in the past year were going for about $2000 dollars. They are tank raised; pregnant makes collected from the wild with a permit.

Most public aquaria have stopped feeding frozen food to their seadragons due to the risk of bacteria on dead food leading to illness in a high dollar value animal. Sea dragons are more prone to bacterial illnesses than other fish. Seahorses have a greatly reduced adaptive immune system, and it follows that seadragons likely do as well, as they are equally susceptible to bacteria infections.so frozen food is forgone as a way of protecting a fish worth thousands of dollars.

Weedy seadragons have been bred in captivity by a few public aquariums, but it is still a difficult task that no one has mastered. For now, only tank raised weedies have been available outside public aquariums and will likely be the case for the near future. The limited number available last year in the US and EU were tank raised, but there was a lot of misunderstanding and claims that they were captive bred.

I'm not aware of any credible reports of leafy seadragons successfully breeding in captivity. The few claims I've heard of have turned out to be confusion with tank raised leafies (pregnant males captured and giving birth in captivity). There are rumblings it's happened in Asia, but nothing confirmed.

Weedies are prone to spooking and darting, injuring themselves and should be kept with decor that makes it hard to do so- no sharp edges and ideally a round tank. They need a good flow rate and are temperate. Lights need to be turned on and off gradually with a dimming system. They need a 500 gallon tank at minimum. I've been told that keeping them is essentially a full time job. I was speaking to an aquarist at a large aquarium on the subject, and was told that they essentially have people working with the sea dragons the same number of hours that would be a full time job. They have them spread across a few people, so it's not one person that only managed the seadragons, but that's more because you want redundancy, should someone leave. I've heard similar tails of the large time investment being a literal full time job.

It's not really known how at risk weedy or leafy seadragons are in the wild, the laws regarding their regulation and capture in Australia are both a preventative measure and a way of protecting a resource that no one else has. They are not on any formal endangered species list. Up until the late 90s, Australians could collect them for personal use. That's probably how philter4 was able to get them; the majority of the restrictions for seadragons and seahorses in Australia came in the late 90s. I want to say 98, but I may be confusing that with another date.

Leafies have more protections than weedies. They cannot go to private sellers. As melsteve said, the permits to collect pregnant males had been revoked. No pregnant males have been collected for the past 3 years. This happened because these captive raise leafy seadragons were ending up in the hands of private aquarists, and AU only allows their collection to be for research and educational institutions. Weedy seadragons do not have the education and research requirement limitation.

I remember a number of years ago, 8 maybe, I got to go behind the scenes at Birch aquarium, and they had just received 4 leafy sea dragons.
They were stuck floating at the surface, they figured there was air trapped in their stomach's, so they were using a hypo to inject and remove that air.
I remember they were a bit stressed as the price on those came in at $4,000 a piece!
They did survive

One of my favorite fish. I am looking for someone who knows how to keep them. I have seen them often in PNG and batangas Phillipines.

The team at the California Academy of Sciences had some a few years ago. They were a pain even for them to obtain and keep alive. IIRC, they had to feed them continuously while eating to fly home and they had to be fed during transport. The reason they never make it in to hobbyists is that they are already starving in the collector's system and then they die on the way in. Those that do make it in alive are typically "walking dead" and nothing can save them. I was able to get a store to import them for me but they were DOA. I believe baby guppies are what have been tried in the past in terms of food but IDK about shrimp. They certainly have not been trained on frozen before.

Where to get live Mysis around here?
Both, LiveAquaria and Blue Zoo have them listed, but never in stock.
Back in Germany I had plenty of places nearby to catch them by the kilo, but here I haven't even looked yet as it is nearly everywhere illegal to even take a pebble.

BTW, a video I found of rare fish at De Jong Marine Life shows right at the beginning Weedy Seadragons being fed live Mysis.

Where to get live Mysis around here?
Both, LiveAquaria and Blue Zoo have them listed, but never in stock.
Back in Germany I had plenty of places nearby to catch them by the kilo, but here I haven't even looked yet as it is nearly everywhere illegal to even take a pebble.

BTW, a video I found of rare fish at De Jong Marine Life shows right at the beginning Weedy Seadragons being fed live Mysis.

The team at the California Academy of Sciences had some a few years ago. They were a pain even for them to obtain and keep alive. IIRC, they had to feed them continuously while eating to fly home and they had to be fed during transport. The reason they never make it in to hobbyists is that they are already starving in the collector's system and then they die on the way in. Those that do make it in alive are typically "walking dead" and nothing can save them. I was able to get a store to import them for me but they were DOA. I believe baby guppies are what have been tried in the past in terms of food but IDK about shrimp. They certainly have not been trained on frozen before.

Not fed during transport, but shipped out the morning after collection. Fed on live mysids (Americamysis from Florida) exclusively.

The article about it is in the January/February 2014 version of CORAL magazine.

Before they closed down earlier this year, Coldwater marine either had, or had access to Weedys (my friend who was purchasing an Ornate Box Fish was offered them). They were a little over a thousand USD if I remember correctly.
I suspect any wholesaler that deals with Cairns Marine or similar in the US can get them when available.

Hi ! Going to offer some updated information. I am a volunteer aquarist assistant over at Birch Aquarium, and we have both the weedy and leafy sea dragons feeding on frozen mysis here and there (the leafy sea dragons take to the frozen better than the weedys). We now have around 12 weedy seadragons in a tank behind the scenes in addition to the ones on display. The 2-4k estimate is right on target. There's about 8 cameras watching the weedy sea dragons 24/7 to keep track of mating behavior. I get to feed them every sunday One of my favorite tasks.

My sisters and I visited Monterey Bay Aquarium in the fall of 2008. They had some, I don't remember how many, leafy sea dragons on display. The vast majority of visitors just walked right on past the tank.

My sisters and I visited Monterey Bay Aquarium in the fall of 2008. They had some, I don't remember how many, leafy sea dragons on display. The vast majority of visitors just walked right on past the tank.

Going to that aquarium in a couple of months for vacation. Can't freaking wait.